So… you have just built a new, cool, powerful PC from scratch… aren’t you the baaaad geek!?! Now, how do you know the thing will keep running? For that matter, a friend brings you a system and says, “It occasionally goes down, it is driving me crazy!” How do you test it to find out what is happening? The answer? Run a “burn-in” tool! Something that will “exercise” all of the system components for you! This package isn’t totally free… but there is a 30 day free trial… and then, it is only $24.00!

“PassMark BurnInTest is a software tool that allows all the major sub-systems of a computer to be simultaneously stress tested for endurance, reliability and stability.

Assists in PC Troubleshooting and diagnostics.

The best value professional burn-in tool on the market!

Avoid delivering D.O.A. (Dead on Arrival) hardware to your customers.

Dramatically reduce your burn in times with multithreaded simultaneous testing of components.

Build your image as a supplier of quality systems.

Avoid costly downtime, system rebuilds and lost data.

Test the stability of a system after configuration changes or hardware upgrades (critical for overclocking).

Anyone who has used computers for any period of time will understand the importance of having a stable system. The cost of a hardware failure can be enormous. If you are lucky your data will only become inaccessible while faulty components are replaced. If you’re unlucky you can lose your files completely or have them permanently corrupted. Even if you have good backups, you can still lose days of work returning the PC to its pre-failure state. In many cases the lost data can never be replaced and businesses can be brought to their knees, with the loss of documentation, customer details and financial records.”

Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3 tells the whole story: “As many of you know, Revision3â€™s servers were brought down over the Memorial Day weekend by a denial of service attack. Itâ€™s an all too common occurrence these days. But this one wasnâ€™t your normal cybercrime â€“ thereâ€™s a chilling twist at the end. Hereâ€™s what happened, and why weâ€™re even more concerned today, after itâ€™s over, than we were on Saturday when it started.” Read the whole story at the link… but here’s a bit more:

“A bit of address translation, and weâ€™d discovered our nemesis. But instead of some shadowy underground criminal syndicate, the packets were coming from right in our home state of California. In fact, we traced the vast majority of those packets to a public company called Artistdirect (ARTD.OB). Once we were able to get their internet provider on the line, they verified that yes, indeed, that internet address belonged to a subsidiary of Artist Direct, called MediaDefender. Now why would MediaDefender be trying to put Revision3 out of business? Heck, weâ€™re one of the biggest defenders of media around. So I stopped by their website and found that MediaDefender provides ‘anti-piracy solutions in the emerging Internet-Piracy-Prevention industry.’ The company aims to ‘stop the spread of illegally traded copyrighted material over the internet and peer-to-peer networks.’ Hmm. We use the internet and peer-to-peer networks to accelerate the spread of legally traded materials that we own. Thatâ€™s sort of directly opposite to what Media Defender is supposed to be doing. Who pays MediaDefender to disrupt peer to peer networks? I donâ€™t know whoâ€™s ponying up today, but in the past their clients have included Sony, Universal Music, and the central industry groups for both music and movies â€“ the RIAA and MPAA. According to an article by Ars Technica, the company uses ‘its array of 2,000 servers and a 9GBps dedicated connection to propagate fake files and launch denial of service attacks against distributors.’ Another Ars Technica story claims that MediaDefender used a similar denial of service attack to bring down a group critical of its actions.”

“… In the end, I donâ€™t think Media Defender deliberately targeted Revision3 specifically. However, the company has a history of using their servers to, as Ars Technica said, ‘launch denial of service attacks against distributors.’ They saw us as a ‘distributor’ â€“ even though we were using Bittorrent for legitimate reasons. Once we shut them out, their vast network of servers were automatically programmed to implement a scorched earth policy, and shut us down in turn. The long Memorial Day weekend holiday made it impossible for us to contact either Media Defender or their ISP, which only exacerbated the problem. All I want, for Revision3, is to get our weekend back â€“ both the countless hours spent by our heroic tech staff attempting to unravel the mess, and the revenue, traffic and entertainment that we didnâ€™t deliver. If it can happen to Revision3, it could happen to your business too. Weâ€™re simply in the business of delivering entertainment and information â€“ thatâ€™s not life or death stuff. But what if MediaDefender discovers a tracker inside a hospital, fire department or 911 center? If it happened to us, it could happen to them too. In my opinion, Media Defender practices risky business, and needs to overhaul how it operates. Because in this country, as far as I know, weâ€™re still innocent until proven guilty â€“ not drawn, quartered and executed simply because someone thinks youâ€™re an outlaw.”

“Public perception is half the battle, especially when the prize is a virtual one. Yesterday, VMware placed a big bet that it could be perceived as a full-service provider like Microsoft, by acquiring a systems management tool company called B-hive. Last year, Microsoft officials admitted they didn’t hold any expectations for their company to suddenly become perceived as the world leader in virtualization, even if they end up outshipping VMware or Citrix XenSource quantitatively by virtue of the availability of Hyper-V for Windows Server 2008. But it did intend to leverage its existing position not only as an operating system provider but as an indisputable competitor in systems management tools, as a way to offer customers at least a complete package. This may have sent a clarion call to VMware that, if it wants to maintain its stronghold on the specialty of virtualization, it may need to expand its reach somewhat into the areas where Microsoft has leverage. Yesterday, VMware did that in an almost Microsoft-like fashion: by acquiring B-hive, the producer of an IT infrastructure performance monitoring tool called Conductor that’s geared toward virtualized server environments. B-hive Conductor is an intriguing product whose claim to fame is its capability to dynamically map all the components in an IT infrastructure — both real and virtual — by monitoring database transactions triggered by service-oriented applications, and following how servers respond. It literally appears to “ride piggy-back” along with transactions, and in so doing, making sure the way they’re distributed and processed is in compliance with binding service-level agreements (SLAs).”

“After a nine-month, 422-million-mile trip from Earth that began last August, NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander will catch up to the red planet Sunday to begin its three-month science mission. Its mission is series of soil analysis projects that involve digging lightly into the Mars surface to study the history of water, ice and life potential in the planet’s soil. But before those soil analysis projects can even get under way, the Phoenix has to successfully land on the planet’s surface, which, as NASA knows by experience, isn’t a sure thing. More than eight years ago, in December 1999, NASA’s Mars Polar Lander project came to a disastrous end when the craft’s descent engines shut down early as it prepared to land on the Martian surface. The lander went out of control from a high altitude, crashed and was destroyed. Since that mission, changes were made in the design of the Phoenix, the next-generation lander that is expected to touch down on Mars at 7:38 p.m. EDT Sunday. Once the Phoenix lands, NASA won’t know if the mission was successful until 15 minutes and 20 seconds later. That’s how long it will take for radio signals to get back to Earth with confirmation of a safe landing. The radio signals move at the speed of light and will travel approximately 171 million miles to reach Earth. The system improvements on the lander stem from the results of a NASA review board, which investigated the failure of the Mars Polar Lander (MPL) mission, said David Spencer, the Phoenix deputy project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.”

The OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project has announced it’s new “Version 2.0” of it’s $100.00 laptop… this time they are shooting for $75.00 per laptop (more or less.) It looks more like an electronic book.

The wraps have been taken off the new version of the XO laptop designed for schoolchildren in developing countries. The revamped machine created by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project looks like an e-book and has had its price slashed to $75 per device. OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte gave a glimpse of the ‘book like’ device at an unveiling event at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The first XO2 machines should be ready to deliver to children in 2010. Mr. Negroponte said he hoped the design would also be used by other manufacturers. ‘This laptop comes from a different point of view,’ he said. The new version loses the green rubbery keyboard, sporting instead a single square display hinged at its center. This allows the device to be split into two touch screens that can either mimic a laptop with keyboard or the pages of a book. ‘Over the last couple of years we’ve learned the book experience is key,’ he said. The idea is for several children to use the device at once, combining the functions of a laptop, electronic book and electronic board. ‘It is a totally new concept for learning devices,’ said Prof. Negroponte. The new machine will also be more energy efficient, half the size of the first generation device and lighter to carry. It will continue to sport the XO logo in a multitude of colours so that children can personalize them. ‘The XO2 will be a bit of a Trojan horse,’ said Prof Negroponte. Initially it will be promoted as an e-book reader with the capacity to store more than 500 e-books. ‘Currently developing nations such as China and Brazil are spending $19 per student per year on books,’ he said.”

“The latest version of the company’s commercial version of Linux for businesses offers new hardware support, several new features, and performance and stability improvements. The company’s Enterprise version is the premium edition of its Linux distribution. Back in 2003, the company split its business up into the Enterprise effort and Fedora, its sponsored open source project. Users wishing to receive support, training and documentation pushed to deploy the RHEL releases. Thus for general consumers, Fedora is a much more economical option. By comparison, with RHEL, update cycles are roughly every 18 months, with various levels of support available. Additionally, any documentation and training provided by Red Hat typically focuses on the Enterprise release. Red Hat says version 5.2 includes ‘extensive driver updates,’ and that the company will certify IBM’s new Cell Blade systems. Enhanced capabilities including power usage, scalability, and manageability are now provided for x86/x64, Itanium, IBM Power, and IBM System z in this release. The OS should provide better support for suspend, hibernate, and resume functions on laptops, while also improving graphics capabilities, Red Hat said this morning. Additionally, the included application set has also been given an update, which includes a Firefox 3 Beta (perhaps now replaced with a release candidate) and OpenOffice 2.3.”

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